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Intellection seems to have been given as an aid to the
diviner but weaker beings, an eye to the blind. But the eye
itself need not see Being since it is itself the light; what must
take the light through the eye needs the light because of its
darkness. If, then, intellection is the light and light does not
need the light, surely that brilliance (The First) which does not
need light can have no need of intellection, will not add this to
its nature.
What could it do with intellection? What could even intellection
need and add to itself for the purpose of its act? It has no
self-awareness; there is no need. It is no duality but, rather, a
manifold, consisting of itself, its intellective act, distinct
from itself, and the inevitable third, the object of
intellection. No doubt since knower, knowing, and known, are
identical, all merges into a unity: but the distinction has
existed and, once more, such a unity cannot be the First; we must
put away all otherness from the Supreme which can need no such
support; anything we add is so much lessening of what lacks
nothing.
To us intellection is a boon since the soul needs it; to the
Intellectual-Principle it is appropriate as being one thing with
the very essence of the principle constituted by the intellectual
Act so that principle and act coincide in a continuous
self-consciousness carrying the assurance of identity, of the
unity of the two. But pure unity must be independent, in need of
no such assurance.
"Know yourself" is a precept for those who, being manifold, have
the task of appraising themselves so as to become aware of the
number and nature of their constituents, some or all of which
they ignore as they ignore their very principle and their manner
of being. The First on the contrary if it have content must exist
in a way too great to have any knowledge, intellection,
perception of it. To itself it is nothing; accepting nothing,
self-sufficing, it is not even a good to itself: to others it is
good for they have need of it; but it could not lack itself: it
would be absurd to suppose The Good standing in need of goodness.
It does not see itself: seeing aims at acquisition: all this it
abandons to the subsequent: in fact nothing found elsewhere can
be There; even Being cannot be There. Nor therefore has it
intellection which is a thing of the lower sphere where the first
intellection, the only true, is identical with Being. Reason,
perception, intelligence, none of these can have place in that
Principle in which no presence can be affirmed.
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